Posted tagged ‘change’

The Cast:
Kimura Takuya, Fukatsu Eri, Terao Akira, Abe Hiroshi, Kato RosaIn a Nutshell:
Mild-mannered schoolteacher Asakura Keita takes over his late father’s Diet seat and is swept into power as Prime Minister of Japan — but soon finds himself at the center of a political plot hatched by a powerful few to gain control of Government.

Hmmm…. This drama is riddled with all the ineluctable loopholes of a political fairy tale, and as much as I wanted with all my might for Kimura’s character to succeed in that cutthroat world of politics, the implausible situations had me rolling my eyes most of the time. I mean, c’mon: nerdy and naive schoolteacher becomes premier of Japan, and single-handedly (oh, not single-handedly, but aided by a ragtag crew of housemates-turned-“political advisers,” oh my!) attempts to turn the tide of corruption and greed that has permeated the highest echelons of government — AND tries to run the world’s second largest economy in his spare time!!! Whoopee.

Maybe this drama bit off a tad more than it could chew, as most political fairy tales are prone to doing. I read a comment somewhere saying that Change felt like a 10-year-old schoolboy had been given a textbook on Japanese politics, and was told to go write a script. Hehehe, I’m rather inclined to agree. I think a major stumbling block for me while watching Change was that Asakura Keita (at least in the first half of the drama) was too… dumbed down to be believable, looking so out of his depth in the legislature — despite his earnest efforts to cope with all his parliamentary obligations. The first half of Change mostly has Keita wandering the Diet corridors looking all… dazed and confused (wink, wink) and asking his secretary Miyama to “explain things to him as if he were a 5th-grader.” He also spends far too much time helping Random Disgruntled Citizens who straggle into his office with their personal sob stories, than doing any actual legislation. (That scene in Episode 3 where the pigheaded cat owner detains Keita for hours when he’s supposed to be at some secret powwow with the Seiyu Party bigwigs–major ROLL EYES!!!) The writing plays up the Underdog-Zero-to-Hero archetype to the hilt, but the same tack which worked so perfectly in 2001’s Hero simply misfires in Change. (Curiously enough, Hero and Change were penned by the same screenwriter, Fukuda Yasushi. Does not. Compute. Does not. Compute… *self-destructs*) The drama would have benefited from better writing, IMO — and a longer run that would more smoothly chart Keita’s transformation from bumbling do-gooder to a shrewder, more experienced player in the political arena.

I pretty much hated Change’s reductionist approach towards politics. You think you can run a country armed only with Good Intentions and a crash course in Statecraft 101? Man, this really is a fairy tale. And the odds stacked against Asakura Keita & Co. are just too high to be convincingly hurdled within the drama’s short run. Given his inexperience and — well, his obtuseness, Keita is a sitting duck from Day One — I mean, c’mawwwwn — it’s POL-IT-ICS after all. *rolls eyes* And Keita trying to micromanage each thorny issue he comes across–like that jellyfish infestation in Episode 4, or the pediatrician shortage in Episode 6 — NOT believable in the least. (Sure, Keita, how… assiduous of you to take home those boxes of files to pore over, never mind you go sleepless for two straight days — here’s an “A” for effort. But what about the other 934,982 needs of your constituency also demanding your attention, ne? You gonna make ALL of them your homework too? You gonna pay a personal visit on every sick kiddo in Tokyo? Durrr…)

Can starry-eyed ideals still make a dent in the moral morass of realpolitik? Just how far are you willing to go, how much heat can you take, how much of your beliefs are you prepared to compromise, how big a part of your soul are you willing to sell — to get the job done, to bring real Change to governance? Okay, good questions, good questions (lol). Then you remember that politics is really one labyrinthine snake pit that swallows you up for not playing by The!Rules!–just as easily as it lavishes power and privilege on the more… politically savvy. The sad truth is that people like Asakura Seita are just the type of quixotic fools who get eaten alive for breakfast by the more seasoned, worldly-wise politicos — then spewed out for the dogs to fight over. Sorry, but Prime Minister Asakura wouldn’t last a day in El Mundo Real. Click to read MOAR!!! MOAR!!!